Now there’s a fun way to co-opt “progressive” language about affirmation and being ourselves and solidarity and acceptance and pride.
Now there’s a fun way to co-opt “progressive” language about affirmation and being ourselves and solidarity and acceptance and pride.
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16 responses to “Pride in who we are”
Oh…’Minor Attracted Persons.’ NOT ‘workshops and talks about Wardley mapping techniques.’
Pedo Pride.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
If ever there were a better example showing that not all personal characteristics demand “acceptance” and “pride in who we are”, I don’t know what it is. Imagine a counterpart to Alcoholics Anonymous talking about “acceptance” and “pride in who we are” instead of abstinence and overcoming an addiction.
Ain’t that the truth.
I’ve been saying it all along. I’ve been saying it for DECADES. “Self-esteem” as a rallying cry was never a good idea.
“The self-esteem movement began in 1970 and I’m happy to say it has been a complete failure because studies have repeatedly shown that having high self-esteem does not improve grades does not improve career achievement it does not even lower the use of alcohol and most certainly does not reduce the incidence of violence of any sort because as it turns out extremely aggressive violent people think very highly of themselves. Imagine that—sociopaths have high self-esteem.”
— George Carlin
Good one.
One of the early chapters in Jesse Singal’s The Quick Fix is about the rise and fall of the “self-esteem” educational movement. It’s a pretty interesting read. (Note: this book doesn’t address gender issues.)
The self-esteem racket is very much still with us. I heard an adult human being suggest that Trump’s problem was all about low self-esteem.
Yeeeeeee gods how do people manage to think that? Point to the most entitled conceited self-adoring greedy people on the planet and it always turns out to be low self-esteem.
I think the interplay between “massive ego” and “poor self-esteem” is interesting.
What you see in Trump (and people like him) is that there’s a massive disconnect between “how important/awesome I want to be, or seen to be” and “how important/awesome I suspect I actually am.”
I suspect that Trump actually thinks pretty highly of himself, but he wants to be the most important, famous, smartest, handsome, athletic, etc. etc. in the entire world, which is a standard that nobody could meet, and certainly one that he in particular falls well short of. And he does, on some level, know this, which causes him endless anger and frustration.
I personally wouldn’t call that poor self-esteem, any more than I’d call someone who makes half a million dollars a year but spends like someone making twice that “poor.” But I see why some people would — a lot of his behavior seems to be the obvious lashing out of someone who knows he doesn’t measure up to what he thinks he deserves. The problem in his case is more that the “what he thinks he deserves” bar is set way way way too high, as opposed to people who think they’re “worse” than they are.
I wish the self-esteem movement had died off in education; it was nearly impossible to deal with and maintain educational standards at the same time. I fell on the side of educational standards; I suspect if I hadn’t retired when I did, I would have been ordered to go to the other side.
I could’ve sworn we’d talked about “MAPs” here before, with some TIF explaining how it’s important to use the language for people that they use for themselves.
I’m sure we have talked about MAPs before.
Not to be too contrarian, it is my experience in my rather long life at this point, that seeming egomania or high self esteem is often a cover for people who really feel very inadequate. As strange as it may seem, bloated self esteem and very weak self esteem are often two sides of the same coin.
Can I ask how you know? How do you detect low self-esteem in apparently conceited people? A real question, not a gotcha.
There was a cartoon long ago in the New Yorker magazine that depicted a patient talking to a couple of therapists. The man was jumping on top of a couch, and the therapists were cowering beneath it. One therapist tells the other, “But if I tell him he’s NOT God, he’ll go back to having an inferiority complex!”